30.11.2016

Response of Liisa Räsänen and Erja Moore to TENK’s
response regarding our article “Critical evaluation of the guidelines of the
Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity and of their application"

Sanna Kaisa Spoof, Krista Varantola, and Pekka Louhila,
as representatives of TENK, state that the Finnish institutions take the
commitment of fostering research integrity very seriously and follow the instructions
meticulously. This is an ideal which has not yet been reached.

The case summaries in TENK´s annual reports are mostly presented in a very short and superficial way, important details are missing and thus the summaries fail to reach the standard of other authorities that use jurisdiction in the society and publish their case summaries (e.g. Copyright Council).The representatives of TENK do not promise to improve the quality of the case summaries and show no service-oriented attitude when stating that the final documents can be studied at request.

We have not claimed that TENK should tell the
investigating institutions what type of misconduct the case under investigation
represents. However, TENK should be able to help the investigators in practical
questions, e. g., how to differentiate misappropriation from disregard for the RCR.

When the Finnish RCR guidelines were revised in
1998, misappropriation was included as the fourth type of fraud in addition to
fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. We have been able to find only one
case of misappropriation in TENK’s annual reports in 1998–2015 (years 2005 and
2009 excluded due to missing data). Since we do not have the original documents
on this case, we do not know the final decision. Cases in which a researcher
who is entitled to authorship is omitted from the authors of a publication are
not rare and should represent misappropriation, but still, these cases are
almost always interpreted as a milder form of misconduct, viz. disregard for
the RCR.

It is a surprise for us that in some cases TENK does
not possess the same public documents we have been able to obtain.

We certainly rationalize in detail why we disagree
with the decisions of TENK or the institutions in the cases we have included.

Representatives of TENK claim that including the
grey zone practices in the 2012 guidelines has increased the number of reported
allegations and we do not take this into consideration. TENK’s annual reports in
2012–2015 do not contain a single decision from institutions representing a
grey zone practice. In the same period, exaggerating one’s merits in a CV was
regarded as an irresponsible deed in one TENK’s statement and in another
statement TENK recommended that the university investigates an alleged case of exaggerating
the CV.

Incorporation of the third category of “Other
irresponsible practices” in addition to fraud and disregard for the RCR in the
2012 guidelines has created confusion. The guidelines mention that in their
most serious forms other irresponsible practices may fulfill the criteria of an
RCR violation. We do not understand the purpose of this third category
containing miscellaneous actions ranging from fraud to grey zone. It is good to
have knowledge of various manifestations of the grey zone, but deeds
representing questionable research practices should not be listed together with
the RCR violations which have been defined and characterized earlier in the
guidelines. As examples of other irresponsible practices the guidelines
mention guest and ghost authorships (ghost authorship defined in the official English
translation “by taking credit for work produced by what is referred to as ghost
authors”), exaggerating one’s achievements in CVs and publication lists,
delaying or hampering other researcher’s work, maliciously accusing a
researcher of RCR violations, misleading the general public by presenting
deceptive information concerning the results or the scientific importance of
one´s scientific work, and expanding the bibliography of an article to
artificially increase the number of citations. This confusing category of other
irresponsible practices needs to be revised and grey zone practices separated
to its own category. Our criticism towards the “Other irresponsible practices”
was omitted from the final version of the manuscript because it was getting so
long for a commentary.

The sentence in TENK´s response “The claim that
45.1% of the researchers involved in the investigation processes are unhappy
with the guidelines and the processes is not based on facts” is a straw man
argument. We make nowhere such a baseless claim. A survey study among the
researchers would have been required to obtain information on their personal
views, which we did not do. We only state that in 45.1% of the cases one party,
usually the initiator of the allegation, has appealed to TENK, and this
illustrates a high degree of dissatisfaction among the complainants. We have
not regarded processes and cases as the same. When counting the number of cases
we have regarded it as one case when an allegation involving several
researchers has been investigated in more than one institution and also as one
statement from TENK when it has issued joint statements to the institutions. When
a researcher has requested TENK’s statement in different issues, we have
regarded these as separate cases. For example, a researcher requested TENK’s statements
in an authorship dispute and due to suspecting one team member of exaggerating
scientific merits in an application for a post.

For sure, there is in most cases one dissatisfied
party after the investigation has been completed. However, there is a clear
message in our article that the dissatisfied party is very commonly the
initiator(s) of the allegation.

Lastly, we wish that the representatives of TENK
follow themselves the principles of their own guidelines when issuing
statements in public and are accurate, meticulous, and honest in their
responses.